Amazon: Amazon discontinued the Amazon Smile program in February 2023, so if you are still linking to Amazon Smile, you are probably driving sales, but not earning anything for your school. When Amazon Smile was functioning, it allowed your school to earn 0.5% in commissions on anything bought directly from Amazon, excluding third-party purchases.
eScrips: Most popular grocery stores, including Safeway and Whole Foods, do not participate in eScrips. For those that do, the commissions are small. Here’s an example from a local grocery store, Draeger’s:
0% Monthly Purchases Between $0-$199
1% Monthly Purchases Between $200-$600
2% Monthly Purchases Above $600
For example, if your monthly purchases totaled $650.00 your donation earned would be $5.00: ($199 x 0%) + ($400 x 1%) + ($50 x 2%) = $5.00. Compare a 0.5% Amazon Smile earning rate with a 0-2% eScrips earning rate vs. a 7-16% Audenticity rate.
There is a $10 monthly fee, or a $100 annual fee (which gives you two months for free). When you first sign up, the first year's $100 payment is due upfront. For subsequent years, you can choose to pay in monthly installments if you do not wish to pay upfront to get 2 months free. This covers the maintenance of the program as well as curation of seasonal collections.
In addition, for every commission paid by a retailer, the school or parent association earns 70% as school earnings and Audenticity keeps 30% as the network fee.
All of our stores and brands are listed on our Partners page.
There are many ways to build awareness of your new program.
In addition, the portal will prompt the parent to bookmark the page to their desktop browser and to their home page on their mobile device.
In most cases, no. As long as the parent is going through your portal, even if they choose to purchase something else once they are on the retailer’s site, you will earn a commission.
There is very little work that needs to be done on an ongoing basis by the PTA other than communicating with parents and encouraging them to shop. The easiest way to do this is to send a dedicated email announcing the program and then including a link to your storefront in your weekly emails.
We curate and create seasonal collections for you. You are welcome to do this yourself if you'd like but most schools have opted to let us do the heavy lifting here. For example, as we approach Christmas, we will remove the Halloween collection and create a new collection featuring Christmas items and add it to your account. This reduces your workload while also giving you a reason to remind parents to shop through your storefront.
If you ever need a collection that is unique for an upcoming school event, such as an SEL week or Spirit Week, you can email the support team and we will create a collection specifically for you. Be sure to give us plenty of notice so that parents have enough time to shop through your portal and have the items arrive in time.
The cost of creating these collections is covered in your monthly fee.
When your earnings total $25 or more, we will ask you to provide some paperwork for tax purposes. Once that is complete, we will send you a paper check each month that your accumulated earnings are greater than $25. If you prefer, we can also set up an ACH transfer.
